Summer 2003 Youth Programs

Creative Writing Day Camps & Workshops for Children & Teens

For details about SummerWrite 2003, including registration fees, see the SummerWrite 2003 General Information Page.

Week 8: August 19–23

For A Song

• JY3-P3D8
• Ages: 9–12
• Instructor: Doug Waterman [ bio ]
• Mornings, 9 a.m.–Noon

Anything can be a song! A book you love, or a day you hate. Strong feelings are the number one ingredient you need to turn everyday life into your own song.

In this workshop, we’ll sharpen our songwriters’ tools, and explore techniques to help us find our own song. In the end, you will have an opportunity to perform for one another and your invited guests. Musicians are very welcome, but musical training is not a must. Robert Burns couldn’t carry a tune, and he’s one of the greatest lyric writers in history!

We’ll share our new songs with invited guests at 11 a.m. on Friday.

Fiction Writing

• JY3-F3E8
• Ages: 9–12
• Instructor: Trish Annese [ bio ]
• Afternoons, 1–4 p.m.

Do you have a story to tell? Is it funny? Sad? Absurd? Mysterious? Is it as long as a book? Is it about a far-away place in a long-ago time, or is it all about YOU?

Our lives are filled with stories, pictures and ideas. The fun part is writing them down! By looking at the world around us and into our imaginations, we’ll learn how to generate ideas—and how to use the ideas we already have. We’ll learn how stories are put together.

Whether you’re learning more about your inner storyteller, or just starting out, come and get creative—and start writing!

So you Want to be a Star: Writing for an Audience
All Day Session

• JY3-D4E8
• Ages: 11–14
• Instructor: Robert Ricks [ bio ]
• Full Day, 9 a.m.–4 p.m.
• $195 General Public; 10% discount for W&B Members

Write poetry, short stories and skits to express your creative ideas, your inner hopes and fears, or your perspective on events around you. Learn to structure your writing by imitating models such as published stories, poems or rhyming advertisement jingles. Learn how to bring your stories and poems to life through theatrical technique. For the last day, we will choreograph our individual work together into a revue performance.

Teen Writers

• Ages: 14–18
• JY3-M5J8
• Instructor: M.J. Iuppa [ bio ]
• Mornings, 9 a.m.–Noon

This class gives teens the opportunity to get together for a week of literary exploration and experimentation.

Together we will try a variety of writing exercises—both poetry and prose—discuss works in progress, and share influential stories and poems. Each student will also be expected to develop a short story throughout the week. We will spend part of each class discussing, critiquing, and working on the stories with the goal of completing them by the week’s end.

Please come to the first class with a story idea—stories you’ve already started but aren’t sure how to finish are encouraged, too. See you there!

Art Walk: The Many Faces of Poetry

• JY3-P5K8
• Ages: 13–18
• Instructor: Donna Marbach [ bio ]
• Afternoons, 1–4 p.m.

Whether your favorite poet is Shakespeare or Angelou, this workshop could be the adventure you’ve been waiting for!

• Ever want to write a rap song?
• Or a tongue twister?
• Tell a friend how you feel deep down?

These are just some of poetry’s many faces. We will use the resources of the Neighborhood of the Arts “ArtWalk” as a path to look at poetry and verse in its widest possible interpretation—from nursery rhymes to serious poetry, both “classical” and modern.

On our walks, we will write from visual art objects and nature and enjoy different kinds of poetry, from different cultures. We will discuss what makes a poem, exploring image and metaphor. We will listen for the music of poetry, observing techniques of rhyme, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia. We will learn to write in different poetic formats, such as Haiku, List Poems, Acrostics and Clerihews. We will also learn to write in different places: cafés and gardens.

We will look at ways to use poetry and verse in everyday life. If you start now, you’ll have a lifetime of image, rhythm and rhyme ahead of you!

Writing the College Admissions Essay II

• JY3-N6B8
• Ages: High School
• Instructor: Jonathan Rich [ bio ]
• Mornings, 9 a.m.–Noon

Learn to write impressive essays for admission applications, the kind that wow admissions officers by what you say and how you say it, that advertise you: creative, curious, intelligent, hard-working and involved. Bring any actual questions from college applications. We will have an admissions officer look at your essays and give you feedback.

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